


this one brief day forget

by ambyr



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5009125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Medea, in flight from Athens, finds Ariadne on Naxos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this one brief day forget

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Angie13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angie13/gifts).



> As the pairing indicates, contains first cousin incest with a significant age gap.
> 
> Also contains reference to the events of Euripides's _Medea_. The title is stolen from there, too.

From above, the Cyclades look fragile, mere flotsam destined to be smashed as soon as Poseidon turns a jealous eye on these intruders to his kingdom. Medea knows it is an illusion; the peaks here dwarf the heights of Athens, and there is not enough water in all the seas to drown them. But in the long stretches of waves that she must cross between each fleck of land, with nothing below her but her shadow, it is easy to forget. She flicks her whip at the dragons that pull her chariot, eager to set the watery landscape behind them. She has not trusted the seas since her long, wandering days on the Argo.

Soon she will be in Anatolia, its fields and valleys offering shelter wherever she chooses to pause for her evening's slumber. Beyond, Colchis beckons. But for now, she must pick her way across the islands, scanning each evening for whatever speck of land offers likely shelter for her and her son. Her dragons, bred in Helios's stables, will not fly once the sun sinks past the horizon.

It is because of this that she notices the girl sprawled on the thin beach that hugs Naxos's rocky shore. She is motionless in sleep, but her hair, spread like seaweed on the sand, catches every glint of what light remains and reflects it back tenfold.

"Our grandfather was always generous with his gifts," Medea murmurs as her hands tighten on her chariot's reins. 

For herself, she prefers her dragons to whatever fire Helios might have granted her body. Beauty has brought her little enough joy as is, and the hearts of men are fickle things; there is no gift a god could grant, she is certain, that would have kept Jason's eyes on her. But the gods do not ask before bestowing their gifts. Ariadne might also have preferred a chariot over hair like molten gold.

She might, but Medea has doubts. She remembers Ariadne from their only meeting, a decade and more in the past, when the Argo limped to harbor in Crete. Ariadne had been no more than a child, then, barely reaching Medea's thigh. She had toddled through the palace with impunity, equally unafraid of the guardsmen's spears and the cooks' knives, finding her way through the labyrinth as easily as across the courtyard. 

She had wandered, too, in and out of the sleeping alcove Medea had shared with Jason until Medea thought she would be driven to distraction. In the months since she and Jason pledged their love, there had been few respites from the knowing looks and ribald jokes of his companions. The linen curtain separating their alcove from the hallway was thin, but it served its symbolic purpose; no one would push it aside. No one, that was, save one determined child.

"But what are you _doing_?" Ariadne had demanded.

Jason had only laughed, and so it had fallen to Medea, already half undressed and skin still burning from Jason's touch, to turn the girl away.

"That is a mystery," Medea had said, drawing herself to her full height even as her voice turned chill. But she had been happy, then; it had not been in her to stay cold. "It is the greatest mystery, and also the greatest joy: how man and woman become one. One day you, too, shall find yourself initiate. But not today!"

Ariadne, suitably impressed, had fled. But Medea can find no lingering sense of triumph in her memory, only bitterness at how much of a fool she had once been. 

For that alone she almost leaves Ariadne where she lies. Medea needs no more reminder of her failures; they drag behind her chariot darker and heavier than her shadow. If her words inspired Ariadne down the path that left her here, so be it. If Medea takes on the weight of all the lives she has cut short, even Helios's steeds will not be strong enough to lift her.

But night is coming on (or so Medea tells herself), and she may as well land on Naxos as anywhere. It is sacred to Zeus, who has no great quarrel with her, if no love, either. There is fresh water for her, and wood enough to start a fire.

She gathers water and builds the fire just out of reach of Ariadne's hands, and yet the girl does not stir, save for a faint flutter of breath. She unwraps Medus from his swaddling cloths and brings him to her breast to suckle, then wraps him again and settles him between the drowsy horses' sun-warm flanks. He is safer there than with her. The horses are not of this world and do not need fodder or tethers, and that means there are no more chores to attend to save one. Medea crouches over her cousin at last and touches one finger to Ariadne's wine-stained lips, then sniffs it like a hound.

Weight gathers on her shoulders despite all her effort to shrug it off. She knows this brew; she mixed it, not a moon past, and no mortal save one trained as she was by Hecate would be able to do the same. She remembers presenting that cup of poison to her step-son, her hand reaching out with a fine goblet only to have it knocked away. She remembers wine spilling on the steps. She remembers watching it spread, and spread, and spread--but no. That is a different memory. The pool of wine was small, the cup, even discarded on the floor, half-full. 

She had paid no heed at the time to who picked up the crockery; it was the least of the wreckage she left behind in Athens. But she knows, now: Theseus himself must have taken that cup, meant to leave him slumbering forever. And that means it is more than her love-sick words that have brought Ariadne to this state. A slow anger builds in Medea at her own potion being used to further another's goals, and she stands. Naxos, island of a thousand roots and flowers, should have all that she needs to find a cure. 

She leaves Ariadne sprawled on the sand under the half-lidded gaze of Helios's horses. Once in the scrub that rings the beach, Medea crushes plants beneath every step, sending up the scent of savory, oregano, thyme. This is rich land; there is even a length of grapevine, heavy with fruit, struggling to make a trellis of a juniper bush that has half-collapsed beneath its weight. Anyone, even blind Tiresias, might find herbs here. She gathers herbs into her shawl and then sits on the beach, back warmed by her fire, to grind them in her mortar. The waves crash steadily against the shore, and she matches the motion of her pestle to their rhythm while the shadows slowly lengthen

It is nearly sunset, the waves tinged crimson from the dying light, when Medea feeds Ariadne her concoction, pulling the sludge from her mortar with one finger and dripping it into Ariadne's mouth drop by careful drop. 

"The-theseus?" Ariadne stutters as she shudders back to life, but there is enough light yet for her to answer her own question. It is only fair; in that one word, she has answered Medea's, confirming the worst of her suspicions.

"No, cousin," Medea says, when it is clear that Ariadne will speak no more. And then, because she cannot stop herself: "Do you remember me?"

Ariadne frowns, drawing her golden brows together. Even scrunched together in confusion, they are tiny, graceful things. "You are Medea," she says at last, though it comes out more question than statement. "You visited once, when I was a child. But why are you here?"

"Why did you expect Theseus?" Medea counters.

If Medea had thought Ariadne radiant before, she had not understood what it truly meant to shine. "Because he is my love! My . . . mystery." She offers Medea a conspiratorial smile; Medea, who has stared at the corpses of her own children while their blood ran down her arms, looks away. "Only, I do not know where he has gone."

"Away," Medea says bluntly. "Away, far away, leaving you behind."

Ariadne does not so much twitch in response to her words; she is too busy peering up and down the beach, though the sun is nothing but a line of red on the horizon, now, and Medea's fire does little to illuminate the shadows. "His ship must be somewhere."

Medea is abruptly out of patience. She grasps Ariadne's chin in her hand, ignoring the younger woman's shudder as Medea wrenches her away from her contemplation and forces their eyes to meet. "I flew here from Athens," she says. "In all the sea from this island to the next, there is no ship. He has left you, Ariadne."

Ariadne's eyes are still wide, but the light has left them. "Why would he do that?"

"Because men are made in the image of the Gods, and like the Gods are fickle."

Medea sees the tears begin to form in Ariadne's eyes and lets her hand fall away. She expects Ariadne to fold in on herself; she does not expect her to launch herself into Medea's arms. Medea has tried so very hard to forget what it feels like to have another, smaller body cling to you for comfort. Medus is too young to do more than roll from side to side, and the others--ah, it has been a long time. But she finds that her arms remember how to curve and shift, that her mouth still knows the nonsense syllables that pretend to offer comfort when there is no comfort to be had.

Ariadne is, of course, larger than Medea's--than those she has held before. Long before Ariadne has finished sobbing, Medea's arm is numb from elbow to wrist, and her leg has begun to cramp. But something stops her from shifting away. 

"Are all men fickle?" Ariadne whispers at last when her eyes have run dry. It takes time. Their grandfather may be the sun, but their grandmother is of the sea.

"All men," Medea agrees.

"Even your--even Jason?"

"Oh," Medea says, "Most especially Jason."

"I thought--the way you looked at each other. I was only a child, but I burned so badly, wanting that."

"And now you have it," Medea says flatly.

Ariadne is silent in her arms. She looks out to sea, or rather to the blackness that veils the sea, for a long moment, and then turns her head up of her own accord to meet Medea's gaze again. "And women? Are they fickle, too?"

Medea remembers every hug and half-mashed wildflower bouquet her children gave her, and every smile and kind word she gave them in return, and every drop of blood that drip drip dripped from her fingers. _No_ , she wants to say, _they are constant, but they will hurt you, just the same_.

Instead, she meets Ariadne's eyes, tilts her head slowly forward, and kisses her. Ariadne's lips are already half-parted in question; they freeze there for a moment, just wide enough for the tip of Medea's tongue to slip in, before parting a trifle too wide, as though she were trying to swallow Medea's face. It is perhaps the most awkward kiss Medea has ever had, but also the most earnest. She pulls away at last, and Ariadne reaches up to touch her own lips.

"Theseus never did that." 

"More fool he," Medea says, provoking an unexpected laugh.

This time, Ariadne is the one who leans forward. Medea shifts their bodies without ever breaking their lips apart, until they are lying side by side in the sand.

"Is this the mystery?" Ariadne asks, breathless, when they have broke apart again just far enough to exchange feather-light kisses on neck and jaw.

Medea feels as old as Hecate, as Hera, as Gaia herself. "Part of it," she allows.

"Will you show me more?"

Medea can feel herself stirring in response in a way she never stirred to Aegeus--or Jason. Some of it is this woman-child, eager and willing in her arms, but some of it, she knows suddenly, is something more: the sense of excitement, of abandon, that comes with strong wine, though she has drunk nothing but water. 

She knows little of Theseus and thinks less of men; it is easy to imagine him abandoning an unwanted leman here. But why do so when he has never so much as kissed her? And why send her, first, into a slumber that only Medea or the Gods might break? It is one thing to cast aside a ruined woman, but another level of heartlessness to leave her altogether at the mercy of sun and tide and wild beasts--unless one has been promised that she will be roused.

Medea looks into the darkness, past the dying fire and the shining horses that still guard her son, not toward the sea but inland. The moon's face is half turned away, but even so Medea can see, where only a few hours before a single grapevine struggled to climb, a tangled thicket rich with garnet-hued fruit. The vines grow even as she watches, slowly but inexorably swallowing thyme and sage beneath their questing tendrils. Deep in their shadows, a flash of reflected firelight gleams in some great feline eye, goes dark, and gleams again, as though the cat is winking at her. It turns, satisfied it has caught her attention, and vanishes deeper into the vines.

"Medea?" Ariadne asks, suddenly anxious. She has caught something of Medea's mood.

If the Gods want Ariadne, then why do they not take her now? But then, she said herself earlier: the Gods are fickle, and that one more than most.

There is nothing Medea can do to win against the Gods; there never has been. But she has never let that change her course. If Dionysus is content to wait this one night, then let him wait. She rolls back toward Ariadne deliberately, turning her back on whatever waits beyond the circle of their fire.

"I will," she says.

They are still awake when the sky begins to purple with dawn.

It does not make her forget her dead children; nothing will. But it gives her a new memory to hold beside that one, and she thinks, when she goes in the morning to unwrap her youngest son once again, that she might be remembering how to hold him, not just with fear and duty, but with love.


End file.
